Gentled ejection, choice honed by Hobson;
Leave, live in garage.
Join ranks of life-losers, the disposable date-expired.
Loss of relationship, wounding.
Dire drop in daughter’d days, life breaking.
Regret barges every feel,
Failings seep at very core.
Quarter lifetime of adventures not taken,
Mintie moments mauled by mind cancer melancholy.
Highlight reels a pilot, limited series.
Littering of litter’s learnings
Estopped at shrub of life.
Retrenched before project parenting go-live.
Half-lessons hamstrung by school, phone (Netflix, grandparents),
Now torn, untethered.
Present contributions
Stopped at the transactional,
Good for a lift, an EFT.
Poor subsidies for grabbed moments, hallway lessons.
Stocks in life’s library of pet-heavy slapstick, drop.
Crawls home to collect kin
Prolong the post traumatic,
Invite scowled disappointment from animals I’ve abandoned.
Plantlings I’d lured to life retreat thirsty,
Tagore taps left shoulder of my humanity.
Kids’ confirmed clock consultations,
Subsidised by unrelly’ed ring-ins,
Temporary tinder’ed try-ons.
Blowby boys of unplanned birth
Employ incidental influence I’ve lived, live, for.
Dating demeaning, transactional,
Dulls four from five human factors (doubts we’re worth saving),
Shame who friends consider compatible.
Absorbing twenty years of unexperienced quiddities,
Exhausts, confuses.
Couple’s condescension
Brings faux-furrowed brow, tuppered food,
Unabsorbed, quote-dubbed advice.
Drink invitations exchanged for one-way fun intrigue,
Vicarious living, safe at dinner table distance.
Hobbies stung, stunned,
Farm games reduced to relieving stranger’s brick-twixt weeds.
New ventures bring knee-pain,
Fickle, fear-based flirting,
Oodles of moments, alone.
Life’s belongings cardboard’ed.
Embarrassment of robe riches,
Paucity of the useful.
Scores of boots, tons a’ t-shirts,
Oversupply of crusted, farm-forgotten’ed tools.
Low bargained house hand-me-overs,
Stained couch (pet favoured n’ flavoured),
Mugs that can’t handle fullness.
Metal ting’ed Registry’ crockery
Risks bristling bargain with popty-ping.
Contemptuous contract of low consideration;
My bargain, stay alive,
Lest I transmit trauma they’ll never outlive.
Girls’ clauses, less certain (though need not be equivalent);
Some forgiveness, perhaps, for getting sick, timely text turnarounds.
Base notes of loneliness,
Gin-tears spin crooned lyrics over-relatable.
Jet-lagging journey to unplanned obsolescence,
Enough of a tune’s beginning to
Fear its remainder soundtrack.
©DanielBuckley2023
Dan Buckley is a stay-at-home conservationist, part-time farmer, casual dad, and full-time writer. He has just published a new book of poetry, ‘Turn it around, Jack’. A proud Huon Valley local, when not writing, Dan pulls out weeds, picks up animal poo, feeds chooks, chases miniature goats, and brushes oils through his beard. Instagram: @craplumberjack.
